It has been feasible, for some time now, to deliver documents from a point of origin to a remote location through use of facsimile technology. Various techniques for transmitting documents, via a facsimile transmission system are discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,295,181 to Kuo. The entire contents of U.S. Pat. No. 5,295,181 are hereby incorporated by reference.
It has also been feasible, for some time now, to transmit jobs from a point of origin to a remote location through use of a printing arrangement employing a local or wide area network. This sort of network printing is often facilitated through use of a print service of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,220,674 to Morgan et al. The entire contents of U.S. Pat. No. 5,220,674 are hereby incorporated by reference.
It is known that, pursuant to printing a job, it is desirable to provide a consumer or user of the job output with a "sheet" reflecting information regarding execution of the corresponding job. In one known example, the job information sheet may include a print reflecting characteristic values used to process the job. In another example, the sheet may include information confirming that a job has been transmitted to a remote facsimile receiving system. The confirmation sheet commonly includes other information, such as when transmission of the job was completed, how many pages were transmitted, the location of the receiving system, etc.
As is further known, a job information "sheet" can be either printed as hardcopy or transmitted, by way of a network, back to a point of origin ("transmission job originating station"), such as a host client on the network. In one known example, a job is provided to a network print engine and upon completion of the job, notification to that effect is provided to a host client. More particularly, in a known network printing system with a server, provided by Novell Corporation, and a workstation ("transmission job originating station") using a Windows.RTM. operating system, a print job is transmitted from the workstation ("transmission job originating station") to the server. After the server has delivered the print job to a suitable printer on the network and the job has been printed, a confirmation notice is transmitted back to the workstation ("transmission job originating station") for display therewith.
In the area of facsimile printing, a feature referred to as "delayed facsimile transmission" is provided. This feature allows a facsimile job to be scanned at one time, with a transmitting machine ("transmission job originating station"), and then transmitted to a remote receiving station at another time. In delayed facsimile transmission, a confirmation page is provided to a job transmitter at the transmission job originating station, the transmission job originating station being either a conventional transmitting machine, such as a facsimile machine, or at a workstation which has fax capabilities and linked to a telecommunication port or a multi-functional printing device which is capable of transmitting the document as a facsimile document to a remote receiving station. The ability to provide communication between a workstation and a multi-functional printing machine is publicly available through a Xerox multi-functional printing system, known as "Document Centre 20".sub..TM., which permits a workstation ("transmission job originating station") to be coupled with a multi-functional printing machine, including a facsimile device.
Known notification schemes are capable of providing confirmation or job run information at a point where the job originated ("transmission job originating station"). The problem with this approach, particularly in the area of delayed facsimile transmission, is that the job originator may not be present at the transmission job originating station to which the confirmation is conventionally delivered. This problem is aggravated when the user is off-site, relative to the transmission job originating station (point of confirmation delivery), and the job information sheet indicates that the job cannot be executed due to one or more faults. At least in some instances, if the job originator only knew of the fault, the difficulty in executing the job could be readily remedied.
It would be desirable to provide a technique that permits the job originator to obtain job information about the job while the job originator is off-site, relative to the transmission job originating station (point of confirmation delivery), so that the job originator can remedy simple faults in the job or, as a minimum, be apprised that transmission/printing of the job, at least for the time being, is not possible.